Risk assessment of highway structures in natural disaster for the property insurance

Abstract

Natural disasters pose a huge risk to property insurance of the highway structures. In order to improve the risk management, reduce the losses and increase the insurance benefits, a risk assessment method for highway structures in natural disaster is proposed, in which three factors are considered including disaster-causing factors, disaster-bearing carriers and disaster-pregnant environment. The disaster-causing factors include typhoon, severe tropical storm, heavy rain, flood and other natural disasters involved in the highway property insurance. The disaster-bearing carriers are the highway slope, bridge, tunnel and pavement. The disaster-pregnant environment refers to the environmental factors affecting the probability and severity of structural accident, such as topography, landforms, hydrology and artificial structures around the highway structures. Based on the satisfaction criterion, a risk assessment matrix for the main highway structures is established, in which the risk grade is determined by combining the probability and the severity of the structural accident in disasters. The probability of the accident is assessed by a weighted analytic hierarchy process, where two levels of indicators are adopted. The first-level indicators are just the disaster-causing factors, disaster-bearing carriers and disaster-pregnant environment. The second-level indicators are the factors that affect the first-level indicators, such as the warning level of typhoon and rainstorm and the status of slope drainage system. The weights of the indicators are determined by using the expert evaluation approach after investigating more than fifty experts in the field of highway structures. The severity of the accident is graded according to the possible economic losses, that is, the insurance compensation, which is calculated from the value of the highway structure. By applying the above method, a network software platform for the risk assessment of highway structures in natural disaster was developed. In two years of operation of the platform, the risks of the highway structures under natural disasters are predicted effectively, the efficiency of the countermeasures for the risks is improved, and the profit of the highway insurance is elevated.